He has come with his long-nurtured hate to call her attention to the reality of something that happened on the farm many years ago, and which precipitated his abrupt departure. Looksmart has resented Patricia for years, resenting what he saw as her superior attitude and the complicated nature of their biracial, post-apartheid-era relationship. At nineteen, he left, and she was never sure why. She helped him get into Ford’s school and nurtured his intellectual and creative growth. Patricia loved him from the moment he was born and treated him like a son, even though, as he grew older, their relationship grew a little more complicated.
Looksmart is a well-dressed, successful black man who was born to one of Patricia and Richard’s employees years ago. In the meantime, Patricia receives a visitor. Patricia sends Beauty and Bheki out into the darkness to look for him. He does not locate the grave, accidentally digging up a dog grave instead. Through Richard's addled thoughts, the reader discerns he is planning on digging up the grave of the only child he and Patricia had: a baby girl named Rachel, who was born dead. In the evening, Richard wanders off into the property. Before she leaves, he gives her a letter that he tells her to read only when she gets to Durban. They had been conducting their affair for over thirty years, though they had not been intimate for fifteen of them it seems to Patricia that his late wife has only gained in saintliness over the years, and it is tough to read John’s feelings sometimes. She pays a visit to her lover, John Ford, the retired headmaster of the local school. The novel begins with Patricia contemplating her last day and night at the farmhouse. They are planning on going to Durban as well. Also at the farmhouse are Bheki, the black driver and handyman of sorts, and Beauty, the black housemaid who also acts as a nurse to Richard. She has a very unhappy marriage with Richard, for not only does he currently have dementia, but he has always been callous, lazy, and arrogant. Patricia has sold the farmland to developers and wishes to spend her twilight years in the Durban house by the sea. They are planning on leaving the next day for Durban, a seaside city, where there is another property that belongs to Patricia via her late father.
Patricia and Richard Wiley, two older white South Africans, live on many acres of farmland in KwaZulu-Natal.
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